Alternate Scene in a Railway Carriage Compartment 4
by Rumour of an Alchemist
Summary: Alternate Universe. Short sketch. One-shot. 'Boy Who Lived' Neville Longbottom on his way to Hogwarts for the first time, on board the Hogwarts Express, in September 1991. Rated 'K '.


Disclaimer: I am not J.K. Rowling. I do not own Harry Potter.

Note: The following is set in a universe where Harry Potter never existed and Neville Longbottom is 'The Boy Who Lived'. It takes place during Neville's first trip on the Hogwarts Express in September, 1991. For the purposes of this story, Neville's 'Great Uncle Algy' is assumed to be a relative on Neville's mother's side, and (due to maternal sacrifice reasons) the man that Albus Dumbledore insisted bring Neville up.

Further Note: This piece is a one-shot, posted in July 2015 as a warm up to some updates to some of my ongoing 'Saint Potter?' universe stories. This piece is rated 'K+'.

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For several years, Neville Longbottom had been privately tutored by a small, harmless looking wizard by the name of Peter Pettigrew with a penchant – Mr. Pettigrew's 'big' party trick – for turning himself into a gerbil.

Why Neville's great-uncle had hired Mr. Pettigrew to tutor Neville was beyond Neville – as were most things, such as why Neville had been placed with his decrepit great-uncle in the first place, instead of his gran, or how as an infant Neville had survived a killing curse, or why Lord Voldemort had been quite so fixated on murdering Neville anyway? – but at least Mr. Pettigrew had been a kind, _decent_ sort. Now Neville had turned eleven, and – it being September the first – Neville was on his way to Hogwarts for a _formal_ education.

Unfortunately.

Neville Longbottom, despite his great uncle's best efforts 'not to let it go to his head', had grown up painfully aware that he was famous – for Neville Longbottom was 'The Boy Who Lived'.

That latter had rather messed up Neville's hope of having anything remotely resembling a normal childhood to date. There were limits on where he could go out or with whom, at least unless he was in the company of at least one official Ministry of Magic 'childminder'. And it had distinctly crimped his ability to meet people his own age to make friends or _even_ simply to play with them.

Neville was partly surprised that he'd actually been allowed onto the Hogwarts Express without a bodyguard, although school prefects seemed to pass up and down the corridor outside his compartment fairly regularly, and there was a sixth or seventh year male prefect pretending to be asleep in the corner of Neville's compartment with him.

And every so often, someone would pause at the compartment door, to gape at Neville through the window. Neville had considered pulling the blind down, but then they'd have to actually _open the door_ to check if he was in the compartment, and to be frank he felt safer if they were simply gaping through the window.

Meanwhile the Hogwarts Express was speeding northwards, and the two girls Neville's own age in the compartment – Hermione-something-or-other and Hecate-something-or-other-else – were arguing about potion brewing. The girls had done an initial bit of gaping at Neville of their own, and Hermione-whatever-her-name-was had asked some particularly insensitive questions, but curiosity temporarily sated, they'd since found other things to do. Apparently both the girls had read _all_ the set texts for the subject for first-year potions, as well as several more, and they were now getting quite heated in a discussion about how to stir a 'boil cure' potion. Presumably if they got much louder, or hexes started to fly, the prefect in the compartment would intervene. It depressed Neville, though, that these two girls were so insanely well-prepared to go to Hogwarts that they'd apparently memorised whole sections of potions text, whilst Neville's effective knowledge of the subject was strictly limited to what he'd picked up in books about plants.

Mind you, Neville's tutor was pretty good on transfiguration, and Neville was certain that if he ever had to turn a needle into a hedgehog, that he'd be at least on a level with anyone else; but being handy at maybe two subjects in advance (herbology and transfiguration) which called for no extravagant feats of difficult memorisation (or at least none which Neville had encountered yet) left Neville somewhat concerned right now by the possibility that these girls represented the standard of academic achievement that Hogwarts _expected_ of its pupils.

Neville would be _horribly_ embarrassed if he lagged behind the rest of the class in most subjects and ended up only being tolerated by the teachers because he was The Boy Who Lived.

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Author Notes:

For the record, this universe diverged from canon in September 1971 when Lily Evans sorted into Ravenclaw, which had repercussions, for a start, as to how a number of pupils in her year developed, as compared to their canon counterparts... (One facet of this being Peter Pettigrew being of sufficiently different character that in this universe he is a gerbil animagus – and yes he is registered.)

In this universe although Sybill Trelawney made a prophecy, Voldemort never heard about it, and simply went after the Longbottoms because he considered Frank Longbottom a particular thorn in his side, and Voldemort wanted to exterminate the principle Longbottom line as an 'example to other pureblood families'. In this universe Voldemort fell about a year earlier than canon since the Longbottoms weren't particularly hiding from him (Albus Dumbledore had less information on Lord Voldemort and his intentions than canon Albus Dumbledore).

This story is a one-shot.


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